Hmmm good question. DH and I were - um - discussing this last night. I was helping DD10 with her weekly French reading (which she hates). She procrastinates doing it and so it was last minute. Also, she has in the past had anxiety attacks over _not_ having homework finished. So, my thinking was to gently push her towards getting it done _before_ she is too tired to think clearly, and also avoid having a melt down.
DH thought I shouldn't be helping her - she should learn to do this type of work on her own. Which is true, but her frustration level was high and I didn't want to end up in a bad place. I wasn't doing the work for her, just sitting with her as she was reading, and prompting her when she was stuck on answering the questions.
With DS7, I generally sit with him while he is doing the work in order to keep up the momentum. I did help him with a coloring assignment because it was silly and would have taken him a long time. He told me which color to use and we worked together to fill it in (I did some teaching at the same time of pencil grip and so on).
Not sure any of this answers your question - is _all_ help banned by the teacher? Or is there a range of allowed 'help' (e.g. encouragement, feedback, scribing) and not allowed (e.g. research and actual writing)? For 4th grade, 12 paragraphs sounds like a long assignment - I'd be tempted to help as well...
